The Superior-Luther Playground was two factories and a gas station away from my house on East 49th Street. It was the epicenter of the neighborhood for small kids and teenagers. I learned as much about life there as I did in the three schools I attended.

There were things to do for little kids to do and things for teenagers to do. Basketball was king for teenagers. We played against each other, and we played as teams against other playground teams. We usually beat the other playgrounds. If we didn’t win the game, we would always win the fight afterward.

The Superior side of the playground had a basketball court. It also had a volleyball court (never used), horseshoe pits (never used), and it had swings and teeter-totters.

The playground was completely bracketed by factories. On the south side was the Richman Brothers factory, which shut out the sun. It is still there in its hugeness, filling an entire city block and being an enormous eyesore instead of being an asset to a blighted neighborhood.

The north side, across Superior Avenue, had an eyeglass factory and some smaller factories. The east side had a telephone supply factory, and the west side had a tool and dye factory and a huge brass products factory.

All of these buildings gave the playground a very distinctive smell and a fine coating of industrial grit.

There was a vertical sprinkler on the side where we played softball. It came in handy for another activity that we participated in. During the day, the City of Cleveland hired college students from the Heights to mentor the smaller kids and to be an all-around good influence on us. That never worked.

One of the college kids’ duties was to turn off and lock the sprinkler at the end of the day. After dark, on a hot night, when everyone but us went home we would break off the lock and cool off naked. On occasion, we would stroll down East 49th Street like the Emperor with No Clothes and greet walkers who were out for a stroll.

“Evening Ma'am.” They would be more than slightly taken aback.

Our softball field was on the Luther side of the playground we had epic softball games there. The games could be pretty convoluted. The field was never intended for softball, so rules were an absolute necessity.

The infield was concrete, so you didn’t want to slide into a base. The outfield was gravel, so you didn’t want to fall down chasing a ball. There was a sidewalk that cut across the field behind second and third base. If someone was walking across that path, the game stopped until they got through safely. If a teenage girl was walking through everyone sat down and watched and made catcalls at her.

Home plate was at the southeast corner. There was no home plate so there were no strikes or balls. Every pitch was considered to be right over the center of the plate. There were some leftover bench supports that used to be in the outfield. You didn’t want to run into one of them.

If a ball hit off one of those supports, it was considered to be in play. Why? I have no idea. If a ball was hit to right field, it was an automatic out because there was a sandbox and a water sprinkler there. If it cleared the fence in left field and landed on the factory roof it was a triple. If a ball went to the left and landed in the alley between the fence and the factory, it was a home run because it was hard to pop one in there.

If the ball went over the fence and the factory it was three outs and whoever hit it had to go retrieve the ball. The ball would have landed in the courtyard of the factory, and the gate was locked so you couldn’t get in. To get the ball you had to walk to the Superior side of the playground, climb the fence there and jump to the roof of the low factory and walk across the roof until you got to the place where the low factory butted up to the big factory and climb the drainpipe to get on the roof of the big factory.

Then you needed to climb the slanted roof of the big factory, climb over the transom, go down the other side of the slanted roof, jump down, find the ball, throw it over the factory, and return back to the game by the same route that got you there.

Phew! It kind of slowed down the game, to say the least!

Old-school games

My father was a “very old-school” father. He was not a bad person but had an old-school father attitude that a lot of men had in those days: “I bring home the bacon, so things are going to be my way.”

He thought that everything was his way, period. Well, that was difficult for me and my different worldview. Therefore, we did not see eye-to-eye on most things.

I was at the playground kind of early one day and I was the only one there. I was shooting baskets with my Wilson Indestructo Basketball while waiting for my associates to show up. At some point, I saw my father entering the playground. That was not unusual because grownups took the playground as a shortcut to get to the stores on East 55th and Superior.

He saw me shooting baskets and came over and said, “Let’s play a game.” I said, “You and me? “You can’t be serious!”

He said, “Come on, I’ll go easy on you.” I thought, “Easy on me?”

“Old dude, prepare for your comeuppance,” I told him. “Okay, we will play to 20 points, and you can take the ball out first.”

He took the ball out and I let him take the first shot. It clanked off of the backboard and that was his best effort of the game. The game was a complete shutout, of course.

The final score; me 20, him zero. I even gave him a couple of Wilson Indestructo facials with the ball. It was very gratifying.